Due to the advent of cable television, direct satellite systems, and other television program broadcast systems, viewers have very large numbers of programs from which to select. Sophisticated systems have been developed to assist a viewer in selecting programs to view or record, among which are the EPG. An EPG is displayed on a display screen as an interface. In essence, an EPG is an interactive, on screen equivalent to listings found in local newspapers or other print media. An EPG interface can provide several different kinds of information about each program that is within the time frame covered by the EPG. The time frame typically ranges from the next hour up to seven days in advance. EPG program information is usually displayed in a two dimensional grid comprising a plurality of program cells wherein each cell corresponds to a particular program. Typically, the EPG program schedule grid has time on one axis and channel number on the other axis.
One such system employing an EPG is a system for providing satellite entertainment services and locally stored entertainment services to paying customers on a people transporter, such as an airplane. The system architecture is based on land based systems such as those used in multi-dwelling units (MDU). All of the programming is made available to the user via one unified Electronic Program Guide (EPG) on the seat display. The visual EPG is constructed from several sources. The satellite programming is accompanied by a satellite EPG stream that covers the satellite programming while the local content EPG stream is generated locally.
One distinguishing characteristic between the entertainment services systems such as those used on an airplane and other IP based entertainment systems is a requirement to pause stored programs during e.g., flight announcements over the airline public address (PA) system. However, when a program is time shifted due to a pause, there is a mismatch between the EPG and the actual program played. Changing channels and returning to the previously viewed channel will pre-empt the time shifted program.
Therefore, a need exists to provide techniques for updating and providing program guide information including program start/stop times in a locally generated EPG.